Classic statement of arguments against God's existence

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	• Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion: The Posthumous Essays of the Immortality of the Soul and of Suicide David Hume, Richard H. Popkin Hackett Publishing Company - 129 pages average customer review:based on 7 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Pretty Dense, Very thought provoking

This nearly pamphlet sized book is pretty dense with things to ponder. Hume speaks mostly about how a deity would function as the head of the world. The reviewer is not intent on being cute here. Hume addresses many notions about "God" through a series of dialogues amongst three intellectuals. They are intent on convincing each other of their individual views. Essentially those three have to come to terms with the anthropomorphism associated with the God of Christian belief system. It really is more complicated than that but this is a short review.

In addition to the Dialogues are a short essays on the Immortality of the Soul and the rationality of Suicide. Finally there is a discussion of Miracles. The latter three are well placed with the Dialogues as they address the philosophy of religion in much the same manner but come from Hume rather than the fictional characters of the Dialogue.

This book as short as it is, requires a considerable amount of time to consume. Not only are the concepts that Hume presents detailed and valuable, but the language is particularly arcane and often requires re-reading in order to understand where Hume is going.

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A few alternative paths to belief in God

The two excellent reviews of this book , one by Kurt Messick and the other by CT Dreyer outline the background to, and the principal content of the work. Hume takes apart the argument from Design as proof of God's Existence, raising objections to the analogy between Machine- design and world- design. I do not believe however that Hume in the work really considers two other major arguments for belief in God. One argument might be called the existensial - personal decision argument , in which the individual out of his own need and will decides for belief in God. This decision can be a rational calculation as Pascal suggests that we should make in order to give our own immortality a chance, or it can be a profound deeply moving conviction something that grows out of our own deepest being and need. Another path to belief in God is through the kinds of mystical experience that thousands of human beings from all cultures have had. William James collects some of these testimonies in 'The Variety of Religious Experience'. Another path is through the path of accepting the Tradition given us by our ancestors.
Now it might be said that these alternative paths to belief in God do not deal with the kind of ' proofs ' Hume is talking about. Hume is really talking about the ' rational way' to God through mind and reason. But I believe that every reader should have these other ways to God in mind , if only not to be devastingly shattered by Hume 's demolition job of the Design Argument.
It is well to remember that there are other ways to God aside from the ones spoken of and questioned here.
I write this as a believer in God who also believes that a very great share of Mankind needs God, needs the belief in God to make their own lives ultimately meaningful. And this when I would also keep in mind the following idea. If the Proof of God were certain and absolute , then there would be no test/ trial / challenge for humanity in its belief in God.
And here I add the idea central in the Jewish tradition, and probably important in others, that God wants our decision for God, our free choice of God, and not a slavish obedience even to an airtight logical principle.

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Slender paperback stuffed with ideas

I bought this book for a class, and although we were only required to read sections of the book I ended up reading the entire thing, including the extra two essays (Immortality of the Soul & Suicide). The entire thing was extremely well-written and thought-provoking, even to a novice philosopher such as myself.

This isn't a book you can fly through. Hume requires the reader to slow down and really think about what is being said. The main section of the book (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion) involves four characters, three discussing theories, and one student (technically the narrator) listening and occasionally commenting. By using this dialogue technique, Hume is able to present several sides of each argument in a unique way, and not simply expound his own theories. The method is most effective.

I won't go into depth of what this book discusses, the theory of design, arguments about God's nature and being, the argument from the existence of evil, and whether a posteriori or a priori arguments are best suited for proving God's existence. Overall this book is interesting and exciting, even for a 200 year old publication. Even if you're interested in modern philosophy, this book still offers some interesting theories. And obviously if you're interested in philosophy at all, it's a good book to check out for some history on the subject.

The introduction offers a good deal of information about the essays included in the book as well as Hume himself.

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Does God exist?

David Hume, a philosopher of the period often classified as British Empiricism, is the intellectual associate of philosophers John Locke and George Berkeley. Born in Edinburgh in 1711, he attended the University of Edinburgh but did not graduate. He went to France during his 20s, and spent time there working on what would become his most famous work, 'An Enquiry into Human Understanding', first published under the title 'Treatise of Human Nature'. However, Hume was a prolific writer, and dealt with many areas of philosophy, including politics and ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics. He wrote in the area of history as well, and had a politic career as British ambassador to France and a post as a minister in the government for a few years. His final work, 'Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion', was published posthumously in 1779, although work had begun on it as early as the 1750s.

Hume was very concerned about rationality. Hume was never publicly and explicitly an atheist, but his rational mind, concerned about sensory and intelligible evidence, led him to question and doubt most major systems of religion, including the more general philosophical sense of religion and proofs of the existence of God. The primary arguments in his 'Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion' deal with the Argument from Design, and the Cosmological Argument. There is an assumed distinction here between natural religion and revealed religion, an especially important distinction in the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment philosophical structure.

- Natural Religion and Revealed Religion -

Natural religion is the idea that we come to know and understand God (and, consequently, what God wants or expects of us, if anything) simply from nature and our sensory perceptions, as well as our interpretations (emotion and rational) of this kind of understanding. From very early in his writing career, Hume attacked the idea of natural religion and most of its conclusions, drawing a sharp line between what we can actually know and what ends up being fanciful extrapolations based on other-than-rational ideas and evidence. Revealed religion is primary what most religions base themselves upon - the burning bush to Moses, the resurrection and post-resurrection appearances to the Apostles, the Buddha's enlightenment under the tree - these are examples of revelation. While Hume does take on the idea of revealed religion in his other works, this particular text does not concern itself with that topic, and stays in the domain of addressing natural religion.

- The Argument from Design -

Arguments from Design have always had a strong appeal to believers within religious frameworks; they have often been used as tools of evangelism, as attempts to show that beyond the revealed doctrines, the very nature of things points to a creator. In very short order, the Argument from Design in Hume's newly-industrial time might have read like this:

- Machines are designed by beings with intelligence.
- The world and the universe it is in resembles a machine.
- Therefore, the world must have been created by means of intelligent design.

This is an argument by analogy, and is convincing to some, but often more convincing to those already inclined to believe in the existence of God.

- The Cosmological Argument -

The Cosmological Argument is at once both more subtle and more simple. The most simple way of stating it would be that God is the 'first cause' of everything. If everything has to have a cause (even the whole universe), then that first cause must be God. In the twentieth century era of thinking of a universe that began with a Big Bang, it seemed to some that the Cosmological Argument was confirmed.

Hume would have been familiar with Leibniz's more subtle form of the Cosmological Argument, which argues for a world of infinite contingent causes. However, there has to be something outside of this system of infinite causes that produced the series - thus, even in a universe with no set beginning or ending, there would still need to be an overarching cause.

- Hume's Arguments -

Hume argues on many levels. His first criticism of the Argument from Design is that this analogy (as are most arguments from analogy) is faulty and not exact; we have no idea if the universe is like a machine. Even if it was, machines are often designed and built by several designers - why argue for one God rather than several? How do we know that matter and the universe don't have their own, internal self-organising principles?

With regard to the Cosmological Argument, the argument is a little more strained. Hume argues that, in any series of causality, once one knows about each cause, it makes no sense to inquire beyond the sequence of causes to some other effect. This is a very Empirical argument, to be sure, and while perhaps not entirely satisfying, it still has merit in philosophy to this day.

- Hume's Structure -

This is a dialogue, set up in the classical way of people talking with each other about the subjects. Hume draws primarily from Cicero, whose work 'On the Nature of the Gods' uses characters of the same names. However, whereas Cicero was concerned about the nature of the Gods (their attributes, powers, etc.) and not their existence, it is the very existence of God that occupies Hume's thoughts.

Hume, despite many years of work on this text, probably never quite thought it was finished. He left the work to Adam Smith (the noted economist, and friend of Hume in Edinburgh), who also thought the arguments against the existence of God were too strong, and likely too damaging to Hume's overall reputation. The tug-of-war over the publication makes for interesting reading in and of itself.

These are important arguments, worthy of discussion and dialogue in philosophy classes, theology classes, and among others who ponder the existence of God.

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Classic statement of arguments against God's existence

While being a theist I do not accept Hume's conclusions, he is no doubt the finest philosophical skeptic in the West since the time of Sextus Empiricus.

Hume, the philosopher who woke Kant from his 'dogmatic slumbers', takes a very empirical approach to reality and philosophy. In Hume's mind, the pretensions of the human mind to certain truth and knowledge do not accord with the way things are. Many things are believed on insufficient evidence or sloppy thinking or for reasons of emotional need rather than on evidence and reason. The task he set himself was in many ways like that of Descartes, except unlike Descartes Hume did not believe that either the methods of science or God (Hume was an atheist) could give us grounds for certain knowledge.

The dialogues on Natural Religion are one of his supreme masterpieces. Published after his death, this dialogue features a conversation between two philosophers about the nature and existence of God and the proofs for his existence. One philosopher is a skeptic, Philo, and the other is a theist, Carneades. Demea the Deist provides a third interlocutor in the dialogue. Carneades states several popular arguments for God's existence in Hume's time, including the teleological argument, moral argument, and argument from design. Philo responds to this arguments, mostly using the argument from evil as well as appeals to the rule of regular law in nature, to refute ideas about miracles, providence, and evidential design from a supreme 'architect.' Hume states the counter-arguments in extremely powerful terms, essentially completely demolishing the position of Carnedes and concluding that at best, only a very weak inference can be made for God's existence from the structure of the world.

Hume's arguments have been recently re-stated by several atheist philosophers, including J.L. Mackie and Daniel Dennett. For Mackie, Hume was right in arguing theism is philosophical nonsense, and for Dennett, God is a redundant hypothesis when the order and beauty of the universe is readily and clearly explained by science, and at best a kind of Spinoza-style pantheism is where the sacred can enter into the cosmos. While I disagree, the adoption of Hume's arguments by many leading philosophers shows both the power, beauty and logical coherence of Hume's position, which should be read carefully by any philosopher who wants to offer a rational proof that God exists.

For me it is not the order but the beauty of the universe which suggests God exists, but perhaps for others this beauty is marred too much by suffering and evil to come to such a conclusion, and Hume would surely agree.

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